A Tale of Metamorphosis:
Zhang Huan’s My New York
“The body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war
and a peace, a flock and a shepherd.”
---------Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
In times of trouble, we search for a higher being with more power who
could give us at least an impression that he—it has been almost always “he”
with the exception of the Bionic Women—would save us all and deliver us to a
better world. The people of Metropolis need an interplanetary exile like
Superman; citizens of Gotham City cannot live peacefully without the presence
of a reclusive millionaire in black attire called Batman; and New Yorkers benefit
from the comforts of their cosmopolitan city thanks to Spider-Man. However
imaginary American superheroes are, these characters from comic books and
Hollywood movies have satisfied the psychological needs of the public (who
search for divine images that are closer to our world) with physical and
sometimes violent superpowers and contradicting personal flaws, issues, and
doubts.
Chinese performance artist Zhang Huan takes the role of American
superheroes in his performance of My New York, the first performance piece he
did after 9/11. For the 2002 Whitney Biennial, the artist choreographed a tale of
metamorphosis. He was initially draped in a white cloth, stood on a wooden
panel, and was brought to the museum courtyard. With removal of the cloth, his
raw meat-suit was in full view. Its grandiosity hid the actual lean body of the
artist and allowed a super-powerful appearance. The newly transformed MeatMan was set down on the ground, and instead of performing eye-popping
martial acts, he simply walked through the crowd, distributed white doves to
pedestrians, and withdrew from the scene by going back into the museum.
Despite some critics’ acclaim that his work presents the “gaze of the
Orient,” Zhang’s performance does not pander to Western concepts of
Chineseness through his Orientalist apparatus.1 While the artist has established
his fame in China (later internationally through various performance pieces
where he tested the endurance of his own body in extreme circumstances and
turned his body into a kind of “existential metaphor”) questioning Chinese
heritage and society, his artistic quest has globalized to examine a sense of
belonging and the issue of assimilation in different geographical locations—
starting with My America (1999), My Australia (2000), My Japan (2001), My
Sydney (2004), My Boston (2005), My Rome (2005), and My Switzerland
(2005). Critic Roselee Goldberg fou